police in the ukrainian capital of peacefully dismantling barricades are moving protesters off the streets to allow traffic through but the move triggered a mascara among the opposition and a crackdown was underway we go live to kiev shortly. jailed pussy riot members greenpeace activists and thousands of others in trouble with the law could soon be set free to see if an amnesty bill penned by president vladimir putin. and the n.s.a. apparently invent a new approach to playing games of work as its agents lead a double life among fantasy creatures and the online gaming world our top stories this hour.

from a studio city here in moscow which just turned eleven pm this is international police have dismantled some of the barricades in the center of the ukrainian capital to allow traffic through tension has been high for the whole day with reports of an imminent crackdown frequently surfacing what is there in kiev so paul tell us all these reports proving to be true what are you saying that. perhaps unsurprisingly conflict reports emerging from the streets of kiev this evening now ever since the opposition movement announced that march of the million on sunday there have been reports that the ukrainian special forces on the riot police are going to sweep me down an independence square clear of protests as well as you can see behind me as if yes hasn't happened but one thing. is for sure is that there

was a heightened police presence on the streets of kiev the ceiling and that has led to an increase in tensions now one source close to the one of the opposition parties has told me this evening that the opposition party in question is claiming that they've had their headquarters raided by police and had their computer hard drives taken however the off florida keys deny that that is the case so yet again conflicting information but as i say the one thing that is certain is that the police presence on the streets of kiev this evening is greater than it has been over the course of the weekend and i've taken a walk around the administrative heart of the capital to gauge the atmosphere on the streets. four tensions have been on the increase all day ever since the riot police surrounded independence square which is about two hundred yards to my left hand side you can see the right place form the blockade to my right hand side whereas to my left hand side other protesters there's a meeting of troian a covert support is taking place not far from here which these protesters think

explain and justify the current police presence. when a further one hundred fifty yards down the street and you come to another standoff between the police and the protesters now the police have surrounded one of the protesters camps meaning it's impossible for them to get in and out it seems that both sides are keeping car neither side want to antagonize the situation here although tensions with the police to my left and the protesters to my right are clearly very high. who are now the one thing i've noticed as we continue our walk around the governmental quarters of kiev is actually how peaceful everything is when life does carry on as normal for example just there you've got the standoff between the police and protesters here the shop is open is normal. well as we conclude our walk through the administrative hearts of kiev we've

arrived here at a rally that is in support of president. what has really struck me throughout the course of the evening is how civil the situation has been we've been able to walk through blockades established by the police by pro-government supporters and by anti government supporters and we've been able to pass freely through them or maybe they thought would clearly journalists have something to do with it but it's quite a civil situation and i think the hope is on all sides that situation will extend into the evening. we've heard more from both those for and against ukraine's integration with the e.u. international affairs analysts and any p. close to the failed economic deal as well as our teams own experts they trade in their arguments right here in the studio with me there. when you were there reporting in kiev what did you make of the way the authorities handled situation you know bill i've been covering ukraine and its politics and its protest for almost a decade now since the so-called orange revolution and never in my life have expected

that i'll be breathing pepper and tear gas in the heart of this is this was the case no one expected such brutal violence from both sides from both the police and the protesters we did see scenes of protesters looking fairly organized the way they were protesting the way or yes indeed especially the takeover of the city hall building they looked like a very well prepared army because the way there was storming the building this looks like like a hollywood movie they knew what they were doing exactly and i have been i spent several nights on my down on the independence square talking to the people there was a huge part of crowds who were just spreading these these bands ukrainian flag and saying we're appealing here those people i talked with them what they were saying is we want to live in a country where law is respected where law is observed the laws are proper and find some economists supporting cold water on the aspirations of those people who want integration they say that ukraine's association with the will mean nothing short of an agricultural collapse the virtual destruction of ukraine's current military

industry and what's more important ukraine will have nowhere to export its products . in the heart of europe do you really believe that that. could be the case your opinion is based on variables and european citizens says well ok nian citizeness needs this various european union values are ones where the pull of the elite takes precedence over those of democratically elected officials the european union is about institutionalized corruption based in brussels and excessive regulation will know about membership balgair of course is an e.u. member how's it been working for your country tell us the benefits the area has. seven successful in the european union so we have good results economic in education social spheres so in the.

unemployment of course to solve the problem in one month from a maze that bulgarian plea to she can talking about the european union when bulgaria was a basket case importing tomatoes from thirty. eight used to supply all of eastern and central europe with vegetables only twenty years ago that would create all sky but that's exactly what the politicians were saying to the protesters in kiev central square over the last few days politicians from not just ukraine but elsewhere to have politicians. arriving in my down square from poland. particularly from poland but we also the german foreign minister festival and the dutch foreign minister to was was also on my down and to have these people trooped the color as it were and to to support these protests i find quite extraordinary we were having a bit of fun of this on twitter today and i can only compare it to if sergey lavrov

turns up in glasgow and calls on london to hear the voices of freedom in scotland and then aligned himself with a group of supporters who were trained by glasgow celtic or glasgow rangers. we are of course following the developments in the ukrainian capital and online and also on our website r.t. don't com you can find the most dramatic photos and videos from the protests. tens of thousands of people could see their crimes pardoned under a new amnesty proposal by vladimir putin it would mark twenty years since russia adopted its constitution and is intended to bring the state and its people closer together what is meant in a question of reports. some of russia's highest profile prisoners as well as so those awaiting trial will be following the passage of this a lot very closely as they along with the twenty five thousand other them

dropped the end of their records are wiped clean now this amnesty has been proposed to by the russian president lies human evolution and it also marks the anniversary of adoption off russia's passaggio constitution and nine thousand and ninety three when you saw on the amnesty first appeared of course prompted a lot of speculation on who exactly could ban of the out of this upcoming amnesty whether it could be applied to the a members of the punk group pussy riot who are currently serving their two year prison sentence for on charges of hooliganism or to the thirty greenpeace activists who have just risen the been released on bail and are awaiting trial in sin peter's work or will it change of the fate of a number of antiques around the necks of us who have been a charge to weapon citing riots and unrest however it is a quite dogs full whether me how will a fall into this category as the amnesty a does not impact those convicted of

various serious crimes and a once a russia's richest man has been convicted of stealing billions from the state and of course of this or falls into the category of a serious crime. the group of protesters in bahrain will have to spend the next few years in jail coming up the country's government steps up and slowly begins progress for markets as the number of those arrested it is closer to the three wells a mark. of us still to come but first america's national security agency has apparently been leading an active life in the fantasy world it's been hard over the agents of the hordes of orcs olds and dwarves in online games such as world of warcraft. has more. revelations center around two games that's world of warcraft and second life and these are basically alternative online universes where users can create avatars they can be no elves or trolls fear that g c h q and the n.s.a.

had was that this type of online game could be used to disguise shady activity on the part of terrorist networks or criminal groups which is why they have been spying on the people playing these games which is basically involve them assuming fantasy identities and jumping in and getting stuck and we know that there are a lot of play is online playing these games around forty eight million according to the estimate by x. box live in fact it seems to have been quite a big operation the cia the f.b.i. and pence again even had to reportedly create a special d confliction group in order to stop all the spies from spying on each other or effectively playing one massive washington network game of world of warcraft and perhaps the most embarrassing really from what we know from the leaked documents is that none of this buying has led to any successful counterterrorism

operations which has led to some suggestions online that it could have all been an elaborate ploy by bored employees t.c.h. q and the n.s.a. to simply take computer games out of work but certainly the n.s.a. have said that they can't comment on this said. they can't confirm or deny it but it raises questions once again about the online privacy of game is it doesn't come at a good time my today is the day that facebook microsoft google and other large tech companies have written an open letter to the u.s. government asking them to dramatically change that surveillance operations so no matter how you spin it it just doesn't look good when you find out that g c h q in the n.s.a. had been found to be playing well of warcraft john hicks editor of exports magazine thinks well though the n.s.a.'s interest in online games is unusual the revelations failed to surprise anyone all that much. huge number of players and they did and

people do spend a lot of time in these games they form kind of lost doing. a range of people as a rich history of people getting married having met in the world of warcraft and i got a saying. i must confess to being in flux as to how you would actually track down terrorists and then it's made it's not doesn't really seem like the sort of environment where you could do it we could do that easily the only thing that you could say that they would learn from it would just be to kind of build you know as i said lost in relationships of people seem to think it's all just calm by people just playing games at work but i think following the you know the scale of the n.s.a. revelations we've had for for the snowden files i think it hasn't really come as a surprise to anybody like the part that you know the n.s.a. is already monitoring social networks now so saying that games are also on the list hasn't really surprised anybody and it doesn't seem to be you know putting anybody off. imagine watching a house literally crumble in front of your eyes and not being able to do anything about it that texans living near fracking sites feel right now.

making life old for communities in north texas and how locals have found the politicians oblivious to their predicament that story after the break. washington so-called peace process to resolve the israel palestine conflict has produced little if any results in fact the palestinians are experiencing excel a way to end seizures is it time to accept a one state solution and or look to global institutions like the un to replace the current negotiating framework. what defines a country's success. faceless figures of economic growth. standards of living.

a year's worth of earthquakes have hit texas in just a month and a large part thanks to the practice of fracking so say experts the state is at the forefront of the shale gas revolution and oil firms are generating billions in taxes there's always going to find out what i'm talking crack and crumble the support of politicians for the drilling remains unshaken. the columns have shaken

so hard it's actually pulled the tram if you look around here rebecca williams is showing me the cracks in her home after a series of earthquakes shook the area she has lived here for almost a decade and had never experienced an earthquake until fracking begin in her neighborhood i never know when the next one's going to hear it i don't sleep at night because they keep me awake at night it seems like a lot of them happened during the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the night to texas real world commission the local agency that regulates the oil and gas industries trying to calm the residents who use it claims there is no direct link between the recent troubles and fracking injection wells in the area but locals are not convinced it's a lot like living next to a time bomb but there's no timer on it because we aren't being told when the fracking is going to start or what the emergency purposes gers are in place if something does happen and so you're just constantly sitting and waiting and

wondering is today the day is today the day so small a juice with the u.s. geological survey say fracking regularly triggers small earthquakes they foresee an even greater danger from wastewater disposal which involves pumping millions of gallons of water contaminated by chemicals deep underground where experts say it puts pressure on seismic fault and causes them to slip but despite seismologist warnings for a king well keep popping up just a few steps away from private. water wells nobody knows about any of this until it's too late and it's very rapid. even though the government is not concluded studies on how fracking can affect the environment well operations are in full swing here in texas there are thousands of them impossible to miss and it seems no study can get in the industry's way if in fact you're asking the question of whether something could happen to halt shale production the united states i think

that is highly unlikely it is extremely beneficial to the national economy franking is being largely responsible for the boom in u.s. energy production but maybe like we're back i fear they could be left to pay the price for her every week there is another tremor and another crack in her house she says she can't even sell it and leave the area we would have never moved here if we would have thought that all of this was going to go out and we were going to live in the middle of a wasteland we would have never moved here and now are stuck while energy companies are rubbing their hands in the anticipation of gigantic profits from fracking people who live just steps away from gas wells or increasingly fearful about the water that they drink about the land that their homes are standing on and they don't trust the government assessment of the damage from fracking because they say the oil and gas industry will make sure that no conclusive study comes out even

if it does come out that it doesn't become a basis for effective regulations in texas i'm going to check on our team. well let's move the focus from the u.s. to another country now hoping to win big on fracking and that is the u.k. kennedy he spokesman for frank free south yorkshire i spoke to him earlier he says the authorities deliberately make access to safer energy resources tougher. looking at the autumn statement from the chancellor last thursday where he was cutting the subsidies for renewable energy and also cutting the measures for energy efficiency in people's homes putting its how over the next two years which is going to cut it by about a third. so they'll be a third of the number of people having their homes insulated as they would have been before thursday so on the one hundred saying that we're having an energy crisis looming where we need two desperately new means of energy production on board but then at the other. taking away the subsidies and the support for people to reduce their energy bills and reduce the need to use it and also obtain it through clean and safe methods swiss banks are finding it no easy task to give up

on their centuries old tradition of secrecy hundreds at the alpine height needing until the last minute to decide whether to go along with the u.s. ultimatum at midnight tonight to give up tax dodges when it's either that or face fines or even criminal prosecution from washington more now with these managing partner at the foreign finance group that's a live in geneva why do you think some of these banks are leaving it to the last minute do you think there is a chance they may even defy washington and not comply well for smallville i'm. a partner for a finance group which is an independent asset manager so we are not at all affected by this it's clearly the banks that are affected by this and we are therefore also picking this up from the newspapers and all the sort of emotional outbursts were getting to this point in time my understanding is that the deadline is really where the banks now have to let the regulator know what they're going to do and the swiss

authorities don't have until the end of the year to to let the u.s. authorities know what what banks have decided to do but what impact could this have on the financial industry there in geneva on the likes of you. on ass it's going to have very little impact if any at all unless some of the banks we work with go on there which is extremely likely i mean they're all very sound. and i think the most of the large banks are really caught freighting and it's fairly clear which direction they're going in and they already have done the numbers and know exactly what they're doing perhaps some of the smaller banks could be affected because the defines the worst of them could be very onerous on them and and that's what some people feel is extremely unfair because the smaller banks are the least likely to to be in doing things that are perhaps not the broke some some rules. and being the least likely they are possibly the

most to suffer if these fines indeed are going to be as high as some people are saying but why should washington have a say in what banks do in geneva how that that is exactly the reaction of a lot of people. but. the world works in these mysterious ways and the u.s. does have an awful lot of clout. able to throw its weight around and feels justified to do so but clearly a lot of other people feel it's there isn't there is injustice in this so that a lot of the smaller banks will be possibly victims and i think a lot of them some of them from this is what we're reading in the papers anyhow are not going to comply because they don't feel it's brakes there had been broken any swiss laws and their law but you know it's exactly yeah i mean that's what they think but of course there are many saying that the tax banking industry in

switzerland has been synonymous and the tourist tax evasion and tax dodges so in a way it is right is it not that they should be clamped down on just briefly. but that's somewhere that's something that we've been doing for many years here in switzerland and i would say most most of the business here is is tax compliant and has been going tax compliant for many years and certainly with europe has been very good arrangements to to go that way and without all these onerous fines i might add on these students so i think the u.s. is is as it has come to some sort of agreements with the swiss authorities to also deal with the legacy issues from the past. just it seems it seems that the smaller banks are are are are going to be. going to be hurt a lot more than the them is justified even because for them it's virtually impossible

i think to to really go through the whole exercise and end up proving that they've done nothing wrong but in the meantime of course the millions of dollars really interesting that your perspective on the sea on thank you very much in the eagle managing partner for the finance group that's a there live in geneva thank you you're welcome bahrain's thrown another group of activists including miners behind bars bringing the total number of those arrested in december alone to twenty eight protesters say in recent months the government's crackdown has become in sufferable where the bahraini people struggle for reform goes back almost three years to february two thousand and eleven when four demonstrators were killed as police crushed a rally but less than a year or should say a month later the authorities then imposed martial law which allowed troops to suppress the dissent by that time the number of those arrested stood at a thousand and that's increased threefold by now but legal and physical pressure on the activists as failed to kill the protests momentum the monarchy reacted by

further tightening the screws this year toughening the punishments for those speaking out because policy reports this is still unlikely to silence the opposition. oh it's the arab spring is forgotten revolution nearly three years have gone by since the people of the rain inspired by the ancient unison and egypt goes up against an oppressive regime and demanded reform but their uprising was brutally crushed within a matter of weeks who have used their name in the picture for the people to sponsor one of the grave human rights violations in my country. starting from this morning with a police officer and minister of interior reaching to the king of bahrain who is legally responsible of all the human rights violations and syud yousif elmo hafter has been forced to seek refuge in europe because of death threats against him and his family and i gather bahraini activists he criticizes washington and its allies for being quick to condemn crackdowns in some countries while ignoring others oh it

was better than the human rights in bahrain and it was said to us it's better than human rights as a duration of bahrain so that's where we are a victims. of their better standard because we live in oil last week the global manami dialogue forum pointedly ignored the crackdown u.s. secretary of defense chuck hagel made it clear in his speech that he was more concerned about military matters they walled off even though there are some you have reported all slaves so that's why they don't want anyone to talk about force yet they did that if they give them cross see that they are losing both lot to them . so very much thanks so far according to amnesty international more than a hundred people have been killed and almost three thousand imprisoned in the bahraini protests many more have been tortured in a crackdown there for mainz

a father moved from the world's attention policia our team. has more global news in brief for your series. a blast in iraq have killed one people that i'm going to call a bomb went off in the town wolfie's a bag that leaving eleven people dead more than twenty were also injured iraqi security forces are struggling to contain a wave of violence that has pushed the number of casualties this year to its highest level since two thousand and eight. started taking control of checkpoints in the capital of the central african republic as they confiscate weapons from opposing groups and trying to stifle on going on the rest earlier shooting broke out near the airport when a number of fighters refused to surrender their arms the pentagon is reportedly thinking of taking part in the operation the scene sixteen hundred french soldiers deployed to counter sectarian violence. in the meantime the debate heats up in cross talk about how to improve the lot of the embattled people of gaza and the west bank that's coming away next.

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just imagine a foreign leaders like alexander lukashenko of lattimer putin just showed up an anti e.u. protest and all garia greece are hungry to urge people to leave the e.u. and join up with the eurasian customs union obviously the mainstream media would be on fire screaming that this is part of an attempt to usurp democracy and steal the country's away some sort of imperialist agenda and you know what they might be right about that but the weird thing is that for some reason the mainstream media isn't talking about foreign politicians speaking to and or possibly agitating protesters in ukraine like speaker of the lithuanian parliament loreto grows in india and vice president got sick pro to see a bitch and former polish pm jaroslav kaczynski he had the european union brassfield is just fine for their politicians to go to foreign countries and fire

up protestors to start a pro e.u. revolution but then all their journalists write about is how russia is trying to put pressure on ukraine to not join the e.u. the obvious hypocrisy of this stinks all the way up the moscow but that's just my opinion. hello and welcome to crossfire we're all things considered on peter lavelle palestine and the road ahead washington so-called peace process to resolve the israel palestine conflict has produced little if any results in fact the palestinians are experiencing excel rated illegal land seizures palestine is quit.